Wagner James Au reports on virtual worlds & VR

Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Today, a Canadian man named Ryan Schultz is going into the operating room to get a biopsy, to see whether a previous diagnosis is correct: That he may have cancer. This is a terrifying prospect for anyone, prompting thoughts of mortality and what life means. In Ryan's case, he is a longtime player of virtual worlds and MMO, and writes about them near-daily on his excellent blog. So when it came time to think about writing his will, he thought about the online realities where so much of his memories and relationships were formed, and the assets he might share:

I actually don’t have a lot of material possessions. My biggest purchases in life have been my computer and my car. And I don’t have a will yet; I’ve been putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off. Nobody wants to think about death and dying. But now it’s time to start to think about who I want to leave my possessions to...

So he is doing just that now, asking for people to contact him and volunteer to take his avatars into their care, whenever the time comes for his will to be read.

"I am not 'giving them away'," he stresses to me. "I am leaving them to other people via my last will and testament." For that to happen, he actually needs volunteers' real life, legal details to include in his will. More than that, he is asking for a level of trust, and personal engagement:

"I will NOT be giving any avatars to anybody that I do NOT know, or with whom I have NOT had at least one good, long, in-depth conversation," as Ryan puts it to me with emphasis. "I do want to know who you are (and what you plan to do with my avatar) before I leave you one of these avatars, on which I have spent a great deal of time, energy, and (in some cases) money."

When I spoke with him last week, four people had already contacted him about doing this, one of whom told Ryan she'd like to use one of his avatars for roleplay purposes. (Embodying the online identity, in other words, of another person after he's gone.)

And while this may seem strange to some, it is actually a digitized evolution of a process that's existed for centuries, as people who find themselves facing death entrusting their favorite pocket watch or book of poems or other small but utterly cherished items to others who'll find value in them too. As Ryan puts it:

"After the release of the cellulite/stretch marks," Izzie tells me, "the response was huge and many people requested stretch marks on breasts, arms, stomach as well, so I made them. " She had planned on creating them before the cellulite/stretch marks went on sale. "I was just waiting to see how the response would be before I release more of something that nobody wants," she says, laughing. "I'm glad people enjoy them."

Today, in fact, you can get them for just 50 Lindens (roughly 25 US cents) for Fifty Linden Friday in Izzie's in-world store. (Teleport here). You can see the before and after the break (NSFW, obvi), illustrating how Izzie's enhancement turns an avatar's breasts into something that much more resembles the breasts of an actual woman:

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

There's a hot new avatar fashion enhancement in the virtual world of Second Life, but it's more real than many might expect. Ever since creator Izzie Button put her Cellulite & Stretch Marks for female avatars on sale last week, they've been moving like mad.

"Sales have been really good," she tells me, "a lot better than expected to be honest. On SL Marketplace, it is my #1 best selling item now, with four 5-star reviews in only 1 day. I've gotten mainly positive feedback from customers about them and lots of requests to do more stretch marks/cellulite on other body parts too."

It's an unexpected trend in an online world where the avatar beauty standard skews to thin young women with nary a blemish or ounce of fat anywhere. And, in fact, she's had some complaints:

SL avatars, both male and female, today are on average shorter than they were in the early years. The downward shift began when Linden Lab added inches and centimeters to the height slider. [See above]

Prior to this the slider height was only measured on the scale: 0...100. So most guys not surprisingly set it to 100. Unsurprising as there was no useful indication as to what 100 meant. In-world there was a feedback loop. Avatars are set to 100 > furniture is set for 100. More avatars > more furniture > most avatars > most furniture

It was women in the main, who broke this feedback loop. When they saw that the slider now said 7 feet plus they started to reduce. Their men began to follow them down. People went even lower when third party viewers changed the height slider to measure from sole to top of head. The Linden Lab viewer still measures from sole to eye level.

When I played in the early years I was 185cm[i.e. about 6 feet] by prim measure in bare feet. I was squiddy as, compared to pretty much everyone else adult human avatar then. I am still 185cm. Yet now when at shopping events I am slightly above average in height for a female avatar.

This sounds right, certainly for the fashionista crowd. I think it's likely that both our perspectives are generally true --depending on the SL subculture: That is, average heights have been coming down in social circles where women predominate, while avatar heights remain largely gargantuan where male competition predominates -- think virtual nightclubs, roleplay areas, combat zones.

Wednesday, August 01, 2018

VDraw is a new app for Windows from Japan that seems ideal for shy streamers, since it translates a user's keyboard and mouse usage along with voice (if a mic is hooked up) to an onscreen avatar:

VDRAW is a tool that can express as a virtual character's activity even casual work being done on PC. For example, if you use pen tablet for making illustrations, you can make it appear as if the virtual character himself draws illustrations... VDRAW is based on the concept that even people who do not have VR equipment can perform virtual character activities. The minimum device required for VDRAW is "mouse" and "keyboard" only. VR equipment and very high spec PC are not necessary. If it is a PC equipped with a microphone, it also supports lip sync that moves the mouth of the avatar according to the voice.

That from the Japanese language website, and I have to say Google Translate has gotten pretty good in recent years. Link and video via tech expert PatchouliW, who believes this is pioneering technology for avatar-based video programming:

Monday, July 30, 2018

The trend toward incredibly tall avatars continues hurting the SL economy (bigger avatars need more virtual land, more virtual land costs more money per month), but why are avatars so huge in the first place? (For instance, pictured at right: Male Second Life avatar in the typical 7-8 foot range, next to a female avatar who is actually 5'7", i.e., on the taller side for women IRL.). But what keeps driving up avatar height? Reader "Pulsar" points out it could be a common culprit -- the fragile male ego:

In the last years I'm seeing more realistic sized avatars, especially at shopping events. Perhaps you should count more on women with this. I suspect the issue touches guys more, as they (usually, I don't mean everyone) don't like to appear shorter that other men, so they raise their height and so on. Of course there are also individuals affected by giantism in real life, but the whole population 8 feet tall is a tad odd. Women instead (again, in general) could feel not so comfortable in towering above everyone else, including their boyfriend.

This sounds right. I vividly remember creating my first avatar, setting the height to 6 feet tall, teleporting to an event... and feeling like Kevin Hart at an NBA party. Studies consistently confirm people form an empathetic relationship with the avatar that they control, so it's easy to see how real life height standards (which tend to affect men more than women) would carry over into the virtual world, nudging many or most male users into a tallness competition. And many or most female users would then feel nudged to follow suit, so the height disparity wasn't so vast. And as average avatar height increases, monthly land costs grow, until they're unsustainable for many, and the land ownership attrition increases too.

Or to put it another way: Linden Lab the company keeps losing revenue due to toxic masculinity.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Just had a fascinating (if disheartening) conversation with someone I’ll call “Asami”, a long time Second Life user and Asian fashion enthusiast from Japan. While there is a substantial userbase of SL users based in Asia (roughly 5-10%, based on known stats), the overwhelming majority live in the United States and the European Union. That’s inadvertently led to a lot of misrepresentation of Asian identity and culture in Second Life avatars, and on the worse end of the problematic spectrum, Asian fetishization.

“Because a lot of people don't study the asian features correctly,” as Asami puts it, “they just make the eyes slanted and call it a day…. I've seen [SL users] with Western noses who are aware that their noses don't look Asian, but they don't like Asian noses, only Asian eyes, so they purposely make their shapes that way. When you're determined to represent a community properly, you'll put in the work necessary to do it. When you don't care and it's all the same to you, then you'll half ass it.”

By way of reference, she points to the shape above, in the Marketplace.

“The head used is ideal for Asian avis, the shape is pretty, but the skin itself isn't Asian and the result looks very Western.”

“This one [above] has the right jawline and the skin looks Asian but the nose and lips don't reflect an Asian avi -- maybe half-Asian.”

“These look like they were made by Asian fetishists,” I note.

“Agreed. People who pick and choose which aspects of Asian features they like.”

Can’t Be Too Big or Too Small: We put a limit on avatar height because of the prisoner’s dilemma that immediately everyone would want to be a huge dragon. Our height minimum was originally about just making sure you were generally visible in the world – no Ant-Man in Second Life. And then we increased the height minimum to more of a small adult size.

“Second Life is supposed to be about limitless opportunity,” Walk remembers them thinking, “but you can’t be a 10,000 foot dragon. We stood back and we said, ‘Wow, this is Prisoner’s Dilemma.’ Like the first time somebody wants to be a 150 foot giant, then everybody’s going to want to be a 150 foot giant, so all of a sudden you’re in this out-of-whack world.”

After some deliberation, they confined avatar choices to humanoid and gendered, with size limits within a realistic scale. Instead of giving users an automatic, pre-made option to go beyond those confines, they created “attachment points” on every conceivable joint of the avatar body. If Residents wanted to be taller than the 8 feet maximum height, they’d have to create leg-shaped stilts, and attach them to the bottom of their feet; if they yearned to be a multi-limbed alien, they’d need to create and attach those additional arms, themselves.

Trouble is, the company didn't limit height options enough. By and large, most active SL users wind up choosing avatars in the 7 to 8 foot range (see above), to the point where anyone with an avatar at a more average height range (say between 5 to 6.5 feet) is making a conscious choice to appear small relative to the larger user community. And that's become a big, ongoing economic problem:

In the earlier days of social networking, we were optimistic that these services were going to give us the opportunity to connect with more people. And to convey our “true” selves to more people than we could possibly ever meet in real life. And this was supposed to be a good thing. Certainly, this was the ideal of Facebook... My mindset about these networks these days is almost the opposite. In no way should you share the “real” you in these places.

... I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if these networks asked you to create a persona of sorts when you signed up. Maybe it’s some subset of you based on particular interests. Or maybe it’s a whole new persona, more akin to what we used to do in the “old” days of the internet, when screennames/handles were the norm. But right now, the inclination when you sign up for these networks is to “be yourself”, which, again, I now believe is a mistake.

I don't understand why so many of you are surprised or put out. The KKW aesthetic has been at the forefront of [SL] fashion and blogging personas for as long as I can remember. A lot of the top 'urban' brands in the events take great inspiration from what the Kardashian-Jenner sisters wear on social media.

That the patrons of this look have taken notice of SL isn't a surprise. That it took so long might.

This strikes me as exactly right. Looking at back at the SL fashion that was popular in the early years (as here and also here), you see quite a difference -- it leaned more toward goth/steampunk, on the one hand, and high-end and uptown, on the other. But Keeping Up with the Kardashians came out in 2007, and in the succeeding years, SL fashion styles have largely followed suit. So that nowadays, my Second Life social feed is swamped by glitzy, urban, highly sexualized avatar images similar to those that the Kardashians have made popular and mainstream since then. Or to put it another way: It's Kim Kardashian's virtual world, we're just logging into it.